“It’s late afternoon and you’re exiting the metro into a flock of hawkers; the lady with a bazillion different notebooks, the cart with cages of baby rabbits and birds, and if it’s winter, the yam guy. Then, before you even see the culprit, you encounter a stench that makes you wonder how a beached whale carcass managed to roll this far inland. You spot the source, an idle square of stinky tofu in a wok across the street. And even as someone who professes “don’t knock until you try” and “don’t be an ugly tourist,” when I first smelled stinky tofu two years ago, I just about blurted out, “who the f*** would eat this stuff?”